A plea for the dead

I can’t remember when last I got a letter sent in a stamped envelope through the post office.

I was therefore surprised when one in a small brown envelope was delivered to me last Friday in the office. The letter was clearly meant for me considering that my names were correctly spelt but the name and address of the writer at the back of the envelope was not familiar in any way.

Who is likely to know me in Owerri, Imo State, the land of Statutes that would prefer to send me a letter instead of a mail or telephone call as I am used to being contacted, I tried hard to imagine.

It used to be that newspapers got piles of posted letters to the editors or columnists, but not anymore with the telephones through which they can send text messages or email for whatever views they wished to express or any complain they had.

I hesitated to open the letter, not sure what the content could be, but it looked so flat that I imagined that the content could not be anything but a one page letter.

For a moment, I remembered the letter bomb incident that killed former Editor-in-Chief of defunct Newswatch Magazine, Dele Giwa but I dismissed the thought as there was no basis for me to think whoever sent the letter could mean any harm.

Because of the uncertainty of the content of the letter, I probably should have offered a short prayer before opening it, but I didn’t. Thankfully, it turned out to be a harmless letter from a reader who claimed to read this column and has “garnered much from it”

He explained that he desperately had to resort to reaching me through posted mail because the contact details in my column was not clear enough for him and the matter he wanted to draw my attention to was very important.

Indeed, it was a pitiable matter which requires urgent intervention and every assistance he can get to save him a major embarrassment.

Here is his tale:

“I’m bereaved. On January20, 20-1-17, I lost my dad. He’d a fatal motor accident, resulting in his death. He died at a hospital where he was sent to, not by me.

“I’m the eldest son of my dad. The doctor billed N270,000. The doctor has the tally to the morgue. He won’t give me the tally unless I pay him the amount. But I don’t have such an amount. I’m sixty seven; I’m at my wits end.

“The name of the doctor is (I leave out) and the hospital is in Umuguna. Please, please and please I would like you to mobilize well to talk on my behalf concerning the bills. The mortuary bill is increasing as the days roll by. This is too much for me. I’m growing restless about my dad’s corpse in the mortuary.”

The above is the plea by Bernete U Ebere-Emezue who can be reached through [email protected] or 08026230410. The letter was dated January 8 but I got it on February 16, 2018.

Would be glad if the matter has been resolved before now, but if not, I plead with the doctor to take pity on the writer and collect whatever he and other family members can afford to pay.

This is one case of an unhappy Imo citizen the state Commissioner for Happiness should be interested in.